Another windy day

Please do view large!

The weather is being pretty consistent at the moment, excepting a few hours of relative stillness on Tuesday, it's been windy for the last week. Mum and I went to the big city today to go food shopping, having coffee before heading for the Co-op to give them a chance to get the new deliveries on the shelves. On the mainland supermarkets are restocked overnight, here it's first thing (if the boats are running to schedule) or mid morning, if not. After a day with no boats at all (and hence post, mail and any other deliveries), the boat was in Brodick, so there was no first sailing from Ardrossan, but the 8:20 left a bit late, delayed not by the weather but by a power cut apparently. The 9:45 came back, again a wee bit late, but without any problems. Sadly that was the end of the usual service, and the 11:05 from Brodick came back without having got into Ardrossan, which is a terrible harbour at the best of times, but especially in certain wind directions. Chris and the kids weren't down to Ardrossan on time for the 9:45, so it remains to be seen whether they will make it back at all today! Calmac are reviewing the situation at 4pm to see if the 4:40 will sail. This is a very bad time of year for the boat to be off so much, as many, many people come down to Arran for Hogmanay.

After getting back from civilisation, I took the dog for a short walk along the shore, and as it wasn't actually raining (at least when I left, i.e. between hail showers), I took the tripod and filters with me to try and get some fun wave shots. I also took a good supply of paper towel for cleaning salt sea spray from the filters, which I am very pleased to have had the sense to do. My new lens cleaning pen has given up the ghost with all the salt. This shot was taken with ND8+ND4 filters, though as a big grey hail cloud had just come over I'd probably have got away with just the ND8, but wasn't taking time to change it and like the dark and moody look of the shot. It is also nice to be able to see Kintyre, a rare pleasure recently!